End-of-Life announcement for Pale Moon "Legacy"

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Moonchild
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End-of-Life announcement for Pale Moon "Legacy"

Unread post by Moonchild » 2012-08-14, 09:18

After a good number of years of stable, tried-and-tested use, the Gecko engine version 1.9 has finally reached the end of the line, and with it, the Legacy version (3.6.x) of Pale Moon. The reasons for this are multiple, but some of the more important highlights are given here:
  1. Functionality: More and more web sites are adopting techniques and code that no longer works in gecko 1.9.2, or cause severe performance issues. This includes large and popular social media sites, blog sites, art sites and most other actively developed web sites on the Internet. As such, the legacy browser is quickly losing ground in terms of being useful for its intended purpose.
  2. Maturation of the Next Generation code: The Firefox code base has improved significantly in the last few versions and the initial memory problems are all but mitigated. This means that there are ever fewer reasons to keep running 3.6.x, even on lower-end systems. The Next Generation version of Pale Moon performs well in virtual machines, for example (this has been extensively tested).
  3. Security: New security patches for problems that also affect gecko 1.9.2 are becoming increasingly difficult to back-port, especially issues related to javascript. There are currently no critical vulnerabilities in Pale Moon 3.6.x, though, so this is a little less of a concern (although this may change at any time). What is more important, however, are add-ons and toolbars that will no longer be updated and have not been updated for a while already. Each unmaintained add-on or toolbar poses a potential risk. Running 3.6.x prevents you from using updated extensions as they are no longer maintained or developed for that version of the browser.
Unfortunately, this also means that I will drop support for SSE-only processors. Considering these processors have been superseded by SSE2-capable ones a decade ago (in 2000 by Intel's Pentium 4, and in 2003 by AMD's Athlon64), these systems are considered museum-grade by now. I know that there are still plenty of Athlon XP machines out there, but overall it is a very small percentage of Pale Moon users; similarly, the museum-grade O.S. of Windows 2000 will no longer be supported with the end of support for the Legacy version, as the Next Generation version will only run on Windows XP SP2 or above.

If you are running an old system no longer supported by Pale Moon, you have the option to switch to Mozilla Firefox or another browser that still supports your hardware. Continuing to run Pale Moon 3.6 is not recommended.

If you are running on Windows 2000, I strongly recommend you update your O.S.; Windows 2000 is no longer maintained or updated by Microsoft and has a number of vulnerabilities that won't be patched anymore (it's no longer safe to run for most people).

If you are still in need of the latest Legacy build of the browser, you can download it from the locations linked to below. Please note that no further support for this browser will be given, although you may find fellow users willing to help out on the Pale Moon forum.

The latest, final version is 3.6.32.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

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